whentheycryfandomcom-20200223-history
User blog:Sparkadillia/Galleries and You: Why I need you to calm down with your images
Hi everyone, I'm back again, and while I'm managing to stay back I would like to address something I think is very important: the placement, and amount, of images on articles. Placement You've probably long heard me harping on you to "put your images in the gallery, that's what it's there for", but many of you probably don't understand why I keep going on about this or why I find it so important. My reasons are but two in number and quite simple. #'Space concerns' Thanks to our ~ ~ ~glorious sidebar~ ~ ~ that makes me want to kill myself every time I have to look at it, articles are strictly 670px across, no exceptions. That might not sound so bad, but when you take into account that the infoboxes we use are 270px across, that leaves us with a measly 400px to work with at the top of each page. Since many of our infoboxes can be 1000px or longer (seriously, Rena's alone is over 1000px long), this means a fairly sizable portion of each article is severally restricted at the get go, and if someone decides to throw and image in there, even one at 150px wide, the text is forced into this tiny little column and that's just wrong in every way. #'Overall appearance/tidiness (or lack there of)' Don't even lie, you know it makes the article look so much messier with a bunch of pictures scattered everywhere. One of my biggest concerns for this wiki (always has been, probably always will be .-.) is presentation and having an air of professionalism. Since this is a wiki and thus will never be complete, keeping everything neat and presentable is an ongoing challenge for me; look, I'm not asking for perfection, but it would be nice if this place didn't look like it was slapped together by a small gang of five year olds, you know? So uh, put those pics in galleries. That's why we have them. << EXCEPTIONS! Obviously there are exceptions to the gallery rule, but they are very few: #'Sprites/whatever is the infobox pic '''at the top of the article (which is an area under construction, btw, so I'd just not worry about that part if I were you) #'"Appearance" pics', ie those reference sheet things we have kicking around ('BATHING SUITS DO NOT COUNT'. I DON'T KNOW WHO DECIDED THEY COUNT BUT THAT PERSON IS ''WRONG). #''ONE OR TWO'' OTHERS, DEPENDING ON THE ARTICLE LENGTH/IMPORTANCE of whatever significance. See the caps/bold/italics there, just to remind you not to lose it and go "BUT YOU SAID I COULD ADD MORE WHY CAN'T I ADD MORE". DO NOT STICK A BUNCH OF IMAGES IN AN ARTICLE AND CITE THAT AS WHY OR I WILL COMPLETELY FLIP MY SHIT. The "length/importance" claus means for someone like Rena with her gigantic article, having one or two other pictures isn't as big a deal as for someone like Chie with her three paragraphs. Yes? I think you guys can understand that part. Amount This part is probably a losing battle, but I'm going to fight it anyway. 8I Simply put, images are fine and in galleries they're great, but do we really need over a dozen on any page? As of this writing, for example, our dear Rena has fifteen pics in her gallery (twenty one total, I MEAN SERIOUSLY WHY), which does two things: One, it stretches her page out and make it look kind of weird with all the open space on the side, and two, it make me upset. I suppose the second one is not as important as the first, but I am writing this so I am going to include my emotional distress as a reason not to do something. ಥ_ಥ Making this problem go away is a little more complicated than the other one, especially since we are in a kind of image-transition-limbo stage or something right now (by that I mean "what are we going to do with all these manga pictures do we even need them and if so is there a way to deal with them better"), but I do think the problem can be somewhat lessend, so here we go! Things you should not add to galleries ''or pages!'' #'Anime screenshots'. This isn't much of a problem anymore as it once was, but I am still going to say no to this, if only because all your screenshots come from what looks like a photo of your monitor while watching a 240p video. #'Actually while I'm thinking of it, bad-quality pics in general'. Kind of a no-brainer, but apparently it needs saying. #'Pointless promotional or official art', eg Mion and Rena chillin' 2gether or Satoko and Rika or Hanyuu and Rika or what have you. If you're going to stick it in a gallery it had better have a point! #'Unofficial/fan art'. If I see any I will legit have an aneurism on the spot. I don't care how pretty it is, the answer is hell no. #'Also, unrelated pics'. See #4. #'Anything that makes you think "Hmm do I really need to add this"'. Again, no-brainer. Anyway… Obviously, I (and I guess Meri since she is also an admin) am exempt from all of these rules, in that if I deem it necessary to break one of these rules I'm not going to get yelled at…by myself…because I had a reason. o3o If you feel the need to do something here that I've told you not to, send me a message about it and we'll figure out what to do, okay? :D That's pretty much all I wanted to cover, I'll update if I think of anything else. Category:Blog posts